


Reserve

by Sheepnamedpig



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: BDSM, F/F, M/M, Pre-Slash, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-21
Updated: 2014-11-21
Packaged: 2018-02-26 11:41:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2650733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheepnamedpig/pseuds/Sheepnamedpig
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harold and Root discuss kinks, dogs, and relationships.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reserve

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through 4.07

There is very little Harold likes about the abandoned subway station. It’s cold, damp, infested with rats, and utterly lacking in books. The admittedly excellent acoustics of bare concrete and tile utterly fail to make up for the many shortcomings, but at least now he can hear the ex-government agents approaching nine times out of ten.

"Good morning, Ms. Groves," Harold calls, the echoing clop-clop of her heels an increasingly familiar cadence these dangerous days. "I trust the decontamination was successful?"

"Ten vials and one syringe of extremely fatal virus effectively neutralized." Root perches a hip on his desk. "And how were your precious students’ midterms?"

Harold huffs, darting a caustic glance at her. “Utterly abys-“

He blinks.

”Hm?” Root prompts, tilting her head. Her hair shifts over her shoulder, further exposing the dark crescent bruise on the side of her throat. It takes a moment for Harold to recognize the pattern of short bars along the crescent as tooth marks.

Root’s smile is decidedly more smug than usual when she realizes what has caught Harold’s attention. Teasingly, she presses on the mark, throwing her head back with a hiss that is clearly more pleasure than pain. Harold averts his eyes back to his screens and pretends that the back of his neck isn’t a good few degrees hotter.

"I hope you disinfected that. I would hate to have to put off our war against Samaritan because your wounds became infected," he says stiffly.

"Oh, Sameen was _very_ attentive to _all_ the marks she left on me,” Root purrs. She leans forward, hair slipping off her shoulders, and Harold can smell the bland chemical tang of the hair product that Shaw prefers. “But y’know, _Harry_ , Sameen and I were wondering if you and John were ever going to start something.”

Harold can’t help the way his eyebrows raise. “John and I? Of course not.”

Root settles herself on the desk, crossing one leg over the other with a faint wince. “It’d be good for you. Shaw gets to hang out with her little gang, John has Fusco to wind up and paperwork to do, and I have Shaw and Her endless assignments to keep me busy. Who keeps you company, Harold? Bear?”

Bear’s head pops up. There are still bits of paper around his mouth, the remnants of a particularly egregious midterm that Harold failed to warn him off of.

Harold makes no reply. Root continues.

"And if you and John got together, then we could be a merry little pair, two computer geniuses and their pet government assassins."

Harold snorts. “John is hardly a _pet_ , Ms. Groves.”

"He could be, if you wanted."

"I hardly-"

"What, you never once derived pleasure from John blindly following your commands? You never once felt the possessive thrill of knowing John trusts you above anyone?" Root leans in closer, her hair trailing over the stiff shoulder of his suit coat.

"I know you, Harold. You may not act like it, but you love to _have_ things. Nice things. Wealth, first edition books, secrets, ARPANET. You practically tatooed your name all over John, though I’m sure he didn’t realize it at the time.”

"What-"

"The suits, Harold. I mean, really? How much more obvious could you get, dressing the big lug up like your own personal Ken doll." Root leans her weight on one hand and straightens Harold’s lapel with the other. "Getting him that apartment for his birthday was a cute trick, though. I thought the furnishings were a nice touch. Very, how shall we say, _kept man_ chic.”

"Sometimes a gift is just a gift," Harold scoffs.

"Sigmund Freud never actually said that quote, but I’m sure he’d disagree. Not that I care. Now, what I always found interesting is that _John_ never seemed to mind. Big, strong, independent ex-CIA stooge like him playing highly trained attack dog for a reclusive billionaire hacker like you? Harry, John was your pet long before I ever met Shaw. And based on what I saw, I think he preferred it that way.” Root blinks, laughs, tilts her head. “In fact, you’d probably be putting him out of his misery if you just clapped a collar and leash on him. Made it official, so to speak.”

"John isn’t a dog," Harold says sharply.

Root laughs. “Isn’t he? John, fetch. Track. Bite. Heel. Roll over. Play dead. He even got you a new friend for when he couldn’t be around to play guard dog in person. Bear, _hier_.”

Bear obediently pads over to receive head scratches from Root.

"What a cutie. If he didn’t love you so much I’d steal him away for myself," Root says, leveling a significant look at Harold.

Harold ignores it, turning back to his work.

Root sighs. She moves to stand behind his chair and wraps her arms around him, startling him into immobility. “I really do worry about you, Harold. You’re not built for war. I know it. Shaw and John know it. But you’ll fight because you know you have to. But who is there to comfort you and remind you of your goodness at the end of the day? Who is there to make you forget, for a little while at least, the way Samaritan is creeping closer and closer?”

Harold stares sightlessly at his screens. She does have a point. He’s never been a stranger to isolation and loneliness, but after three years of having John by his side, of Fusco and Carter and Shaw and, more recently Root, weaving in and out of his life, the silence of his own company has grown intolerable. And yet…

"When someone I car- When Grace was used against me, I ordered John and Sameen to let me go in exchange for her. I asked them to avoid violence, of course. I couldn’t let anything risk Grace’s safety. But I told them, I demanded of them that, if Grace came to any harm, they would kill Greer and his subordinates to the last man.

"I abhor violence. I can’t imagine doing what John and Sameen and yourself do. I couldn’t even touch John’s weapons when they were cluttering up the library. But the thought of Grace, my Grace, _harmed_ by those men, I-

"I would have had John and Sameen wreak my vengeance upon them without a single regret."

Root clutches Harold tighter. He tentatively pats the arms curled over his chest.

"So I suppose that I’m afraid. After all, Grace was safe, for the most part. Her involvement in this business with Samaritan was an extraordinary case. But to allow myself to care as deeply about John and then be forced to watch him walk into danger time and again? If I were forced to watch him die? What sort of hell would I rain down upon this world if the mere thought of Grace coming to harm was enough to strip me of my morality?"

The silence stretches for a long chain of moments as Harold contemplates the worst. He is startled from his thoughts by the sensation of something warm dripping onto his scalp.

"Ms. Groves?"

Root releases him and he turns his chair in time to see her daubing her eyelashes to clean off the residual tears. “Oh, Harry,” she sighs, mouth pulling into a tremulous smile. “You have such a wonderful heart. If only we could all have hearts as good as yours.”

"Amen," a rasping voice calls.

Harold and Root startle, and when Root turns to look, Harold can see past her to John standing there, wearing the trademark suit that Harold put him in, holding a pastry box and a familiar to-go beverage cup. His expression is not unfamiliar; on the contrary, it is an expression that Harold has seen with increasing frequency over the past three years, a warm look of fondness and trust and care.

"John," Harold gasps.

John smiles. “Harold.”

The world seems to tunnel in around them, as though nothing exists beyond his point A and John’s point B, connected by a line of such geometric perfection that there cannot exist a shorter distance within all quantum possibilities of this moment.

John’s expression is one of such extraordinary affection that Harold’s heart compresses with the same, as though one point existing in two separate locations simultaneously, utterly impossible and yet impossibly real, because emotion always has laughed in the face of the sciences. Terror wells up to combat it and there is a moment where Harold is suspended between the two disparate emotions.

He numbly reaches up to accept the offerings John presents to him. There is no cliched brush of fingertips, no spark nor flash of tingling heat against his skin. There is only John’s warm eyes crinkling at the corners and the creases around his smiling mouth.

And then there is nothing but the relaxed slope of his broad shoulders as he turns away to tape a printed photo to the train car’s window.

"We have a new number."


End file.
